


All the World's a Stage

by onkoona



Category: Ayatsuri Sakon | Puppet Master Sakon, Hikaru no Go
Genre: Hikaru no Go Unofficial Blind Go round 2 (2018), Post-Canon, cross-over
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-22
Updated: 2018-05-22
Packaged: 2019-05-10 03:36:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 5,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14729213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onkoona/pseuds/onkoona
Summary: Hikaru is surprised to receive an invitation to the puppet theater, from a Tachibana Sakon.This is a cross over with Ayatsuri Sakon, (which was originally  illustrated by Takeshi Obata, before he did HnG). You don't really have to know anything about AS, because introductions will be made.Conversely, if you're new to Hikaru no Go, than you'll probably need to do some wiki reading, and watch the first two or three eps. (It's no hardship, I assure you , ;) )This fic was part of 2018's Unofficial Blind Go.





	1. Chapter 1

  
Bunraku? Why on earth would he be getting a ticket for a Bunraku play? Everybody Hikaru knew, knew he was patently NOT interested in any ‘olde’ culture - except maybe some things from the Heian perdiod - so who would have sent him these tickets?! With an assigned seat number too.   
  
Well, not anybody he knew, obviously. And the plot thickened; there was writing on the blank back of the ticket. “Please see me after the show. Dressing room 3. It’s important.” It was signed 橘 左近.Tachibana Sakon.  
  
Hikaru knew he wouldn’t like Bunraku; it's puppet theater. But he knew he did love a mystery. Was this Go related? Or maybe Tachibana was Hikaru’s long lost, super rich, 99 year old great-uncle, who wanted to include him in his will? Oh, the money!   
  
Nah, probably not. It was probably Go related. Go players were a weird bunch and Hikaru had been in many strange places, though usually because some one Hikaru actually knew had sent him there.   
  
Hikaru gave going or not going a little more thought, but in the end curiosity won out.   
  
~~~~~~~~~~  
  
The Bunraku performance was fully as boring as Hikaru had expected. The only thing that saved it a little bit was that he had been seated on the right flank of the first row, closest to the stage, and he was close enough to be able to observe the mechanics of the puppeteers - for some dolls 3 puppeteers - working the doll, and also he could see each doll’s main puppeteer’s face. (The other 2 wore black clothing and a hood, ninja style; not much to see there).   
  
Hikaru found the faces of puppets bland, and the play itself was dull (and painful to his ears), so he concentrated on the main puppeteers; their faces mostly. Hikaru’s chosen profession had made him interested in people’s faces; after all, he spent most of his time trying to read them for clues about what his opponent was thinking.   
  
The puppeteer’s faces all wore looks of deep concentration, much reminiscent of the better Go player that Hikaru faced on a daily basis. Hikaru had long ago observed that this look came in many different forms. Hard and soft concentration, forced or free-flowing. Very rarely had Hikaru seen serene concentration. Really, he had only ever seen in more than once on one person. The person he still missed like an amputated limb.   
  
Hikaru was abruptly reminded of Sai when he looked at the only young man on the stage; the puppeteer who was working the hero of the play, an emotionally tortured lady doll with an enormous fan in her overly stylized hair. The puppeteer wore that same serene look that Sai would, when a game was really well balanced and beautiful.   
  
The sudden connection made Hikaru’s hear squeeze painfully. He had been so young when Sai had been with him, and the Ghost had tried to teach him to see the beauty of Go as well as it’s fascination, but Hikaru had not been susceptible than. He was now. Now he could understand why the puppeteer wore that look, even if Hikaru knew nothing about Bunraku; it was the perfect harmony of the dolls movement, the balance and the beauty.  
  
~~~~~~~  
  
After the last round of applause Hikaru was about to get up to start looking for dressing room 3, when a woman in kimono came up and asked him to follow her. With so many people trying to leave the theater it was too noisy to ask her anything, and once’s they’d started walking Hikaru was busy keeping up with the lady, because she was a fast walker and the back stage area he was being guided through was stuffed with moving people carrying the large puppets and stationary bits of scenery, boxes and other props. So by the time she had shown him into dressing room 3, Hikaru hadn’t had a chance to get any answers, being distracted with having to take off his shoes.   
  
Inside the dressing room was a sea of quiet. It was spacious, traditional, with tatami mats, wall hangings and a room dividing screen, and off to the left was a stand with a puppet of the same type as in the performance, though Hikaru didn’t remember seeing this one on stage; he would have remembered the spiky red hair, for sure.   
  
As no one was in the room, Hikaru took the time to look around. He knew he was naturally nosey, and that that was hardly ever appreciated, but if no one was there, he could afford to be as nosey as he liked.   
  
The puppet interested him from the get-go. This one had a much more expressive face than the ones earlier. He scooted over for a closer look, his hand lifting towards the bangs, gently pushing the aside, so he could see the face properly. Yes, a much more expressive face, even with the eyes closed like that.   
  
“Hey! Watchya think you’re looking at, you /baka/!”   
  
Hikaru was so shocked at the sound coming from the doll, that he threw himself away from the figure, screeching out his fright, “AAAAAAAAARRRGGGG!!!!”  
  
He landed unceremoniously next to the sliding door just as it slid closed, admitting a man of maybe 25, who calmly dropped his /geta/ stepping onto the tatami mats in his black /tabi/ socks.   
  
“Ukon, behave, we have a guest,” the man said towards the doll. Then he looked down to where Hikaru was still laying on his back, extended a hand, which Hikaru took, and as the man pulled him up to his feet, Hikaru recognized the man as the puppeteer with the serene look. His “I’m Tachibana Sakon, /douzo yorshiku/, though I see you already got a taste of Ukon’s tender care,” and the smile he gave, put Hikaru at ease; some at least. But as Tachibana moved away towards the divider, and bade Hikaru sit down, Hikaru chose a spot a good ways away from the creepy doll, moving a seating pillow with him to where he sat down in /seiza/.   
  
~~~~~~~~~   
  
“So, uh, what was so important,” Hikaru asked, following Tachibana’s path as the man stepped behind the screen, while he kept both eyes on the doll, which seemed to just hang there lifeless on it’s display perch.   
  
“Excuse my while I change; these performance robes are a little thick and heavy for the time of year,” came Tachibaba’s voice from behind the screen, along with noises of silks fabrics rubbing on more silk fabrics; a distinctive sound. “Ukon, you explain; this is your show after all,” the man added, and Hikaru fixed his full attention back on the creepy doll, while thinking ‘please don’t!’  
  
“Yeah, okay, lemme do all the heavy lifting, why don’t you?”  
  
”Ukon, be nice.”  
  
”Why should I be nice today? I always have to be nice and you didn’t even play with me all day. A little bit of me time isn’t too much to ask, is it?”  
  
“You know Sundays we have matinee and an evening performance. I hardly get time to sit and eat a proper meal all day, much less play with you. Tomorrow we can play, don’t worry.”  
  
“Yeah, yeah, you say that every Sunday, and then by tomorrow you’ll have us running all over Tokyo, for something or other. I hardly call that spending quality time!”  
  
Hikaru could swear the child-like voice actually came from the puppet, but that’s impossible, isn’t it? As Hikaru sat there, listening to the by play, he had realized that the doll must be a ventriloquist’s dummy and Tachibana was the ventriloquist. After all, ‘Ukon’ had not started talking until ‘Sakon’ had opened the door. The expert way the guy threw his voice was really a good trick, but a trick none-the-less. And with these thoughts he started to relax.   
  
“Ukon!” Tachibana admonished, as he stepped out behind the screen. He now more a simple /hakama/ and /gi/, and looked relaxed. He gave Hikaru a nod and sat himself down at a standing mirror. He then started to take off his light stage make-up. Hikaru gave raised eyebrow back and Tachibana said, “You ask you question, Ukon,” over his shoulder to the puppet.   
  
“Right,” Ukon started, and Hikaru directed 4/5th of his attention on the puppet, and 1/5th on the puppeteer. After all, you never know.   
  
“Does the name Fujiwara mean anything to you?”  
  
~~~~~~~~~  
TBC


	2. Chapter 2

Hikaru was off his butt the moment he heard the name. "Sai! What do you know about him?" he asked, not quite sure where to direct the question, to the puppet or the puppeteer. He settled for the puppet when it spoke again.   
  
"So at least you're the right Shindou. We've searching our buts off; who knew there where that many Shindou Hikarus in Tokyo? It's a good thing I remembered Fujiware said somethin' about Go, or we'd be seeing possible Shindous until the cows come home. We..."   
  
"Ukon!" This time it was Hikaru calling the puppet to heel as though he was a real person. He was going to start believe it soon, if he wasn't careful.   
  
"Where. Did. You. Hear. About Fujiwara?" he enunciate clearly. He was going to throttle the thing next, if it didn't stop yammering and started give Hikaru some info!  
  
From the corner of his eye, he could see Tachibana quirk an eye brow and cock his head. At least Hikaru wasn't alone in his annoyance.   
  
"Okay, okay, hold your horses, geez, let a guy breathe, will ya!"   
  
Hikaru crossed his arms in impatience.   
  
From beside him, Tachibana got up and walked to the display stand, and lifted the puppet up. The moment it was beside him, it appeared to come to life. The head came up. the eyes opened, the arms started to move to a similar pose the Hikaru's own and the head turned away as a put-upon look came over the wooden face.   
  
"Do a favor for a friend, and look what it gets me?" Ukon grumbled.   
  
Hikaru had sat down hard on his ass in shock. The puppet, Ukon, appeared to be? was? alive! It was a trick, Hikaru was sure, but it was so real and uncanny, that it felt to Hikaru that his brain might explode if he though about it too long. So he stopped. And let Tachibana ask what Hikaru wanted to know most.   
  
"Tell us about Fujiwara," Sakon commanded.  
  
~~~~~~~~~  
  
"I was in the puppet workshop for repairs to my shoulder. Which is now fine, thank you for asking. Anyway, I was sitting on the workbench, with clothes and my arm off, when the worker left for the day, just like that, the /baka/!"  
  
"Ukon."  
  
"Okay, okay! Anyway, I was sitting there for thw whole night, just looking at stack and stacks of boxes right across from me, boxes with bits of puppets in 'm, really creepy, lemme tell ya, down right rude to my kinda person, if you ask me!"  
  
"We didn't. Get on with it Ukon."  
  
"Alright, alright! Anyway, so I sit there and when it really was the darkest part of the night, oh and by the way, thank you for leaving me overnight in the self same workshop that I nearly burned up in the last time I was in for repairs!"  
  
"You were not actually in the building when it burnt down, so stop whining."  
  
"Yeah sure, keep telling yourself that... Anyway, it was pitch black dark and I suddenly hear a voice. It was lamenting, I think, but it was muffled, so couldn't quite make it out. But I was bored and it was dark so I called out and it answered. It, he, was upset and it took me a while to figure out why.   
  
"He told me his name, Fujiwara Sai, and then he just kept crying and asking for 'Hikaru' and 'Torajiro'. Took ages to get more info out of him and I never did get more than Shindou Hikaru and that it had come to do with /igo/, with Go. Sakon then went to look for these people and we only found you, and at first too many of you."   
  
"But we never found 'Torajiro'; the name is too generic, even when related to Go," Tachibana picked up the story.   
  
"You wouldn't; he's been dead for over 150 years," Hikaru added in, speaking to Tachibana. He turned back to Ukon, and asked urgently, "So where is Sai?"  
  
Ukon pulled an embarrassed face, hand coming down behind his neck, making his elbow sticking up. "Well... I think he's in one of the work boxes. That's where the sound came from anyway," he hastily added after Hikaru's incredulous "WHAT?"  
  
~~~~~~~~~~  
  
Of course Hikaru had wanted to go to that workshop right that minute, but Sakon's reminder that it was nearly 11 o'clock on a Sunday evening cooled him off a little bit. (The fact that Hikaru didn't actually know which puppet workshop Sai was at, was a big factor as well). But Tachibana was willing to take Hikaru bright and early the next morning, much Ukon's grumblings of "there goes another perfect day down the drain, urg."  
  
~~~~~~~~~~  
  
Hikaru really shouldn't have even bothered going to bed; he didn't get a wink of sleep between arriving home at 1 am and having to get up at 5:30 am, ready to meet Ukon and Tachibana at the train station nearest the workshop at 7:15. Hikaru had insisted they would go to the workshop the moment it opnened, which turned out to be 7:30. And, of course, it was situated at the opposite end of Tokyo, arg!   
  
But Hikaru was more worried about what they would find, and nor was he sure he actually believed Ukon's story. Sai at a puppet workshop? Why?! Not to mention how. It was so weird. These thoughts had kept him up all night, and he was more than ready to lay them to rest one way or another.   
  
~~~~~~~~   
  
The Fukami Puppet Workshops were situated in an older, more traditional quarter of Tokyo. The grounds even had a traditional gate. The group, Sakon, Ukon and Hikaru, all wearing casual clothing, except Ukon, were let in by a young woman, wearing a casual kimono, who addressed Tachibana as Onii-san, and Ukon as Funny Onii-chan, as she ruffled Ukon's red fur-like hair in familiar affection. To Hikaru she was normal polite, introducing herself as Sayo, assistant manager of the Fukami Puppet Workshops.   
  
"What can I do for you, Onii-san? A tour of the workshops, for your friend?" she asked politely, but with a smirk on her face that clearly stated that she thought Hikaru would definitely NOT be interested in a boring tour.   
  
"Almost, Sayo-chan. We'd like to see where you put Ukon overnight when he was here last week," Tachibana explained.  
  
"Uh? Well," Sayo swung her head around, looking at each of the five buildings on the grounds, four of which looked like work places and one looked residential. "Uhm, I think, as we had Yoji-san work on him, he probably was in this building for the night." She pointed left to the newer looking of the four work buildings, and started in that direction, the rest following her.   
  
~~~~~~~~  
  
Inside was, as expected, a traditional looking workshop with a bench on one side with rows of open shelves with tools and materials like rough fabrics and wood pieces. And on the other side an entire wall with open shelves that held nothing but boxes, of all sizes and with labels, some faded with age.   
  
On the work bench sat pieces of puppet, mostly wooden pieces and looked like it was the main assembly place, judging by the different types of pieces that had been laid out. There was no one at work there right that moment.   
  
"Yes! This is where I was sitting," Ukon exclaimed, pointing at a spot where some unprinted newspaper type paper was spread out on the otherwise grubby work top.   
  
"So,"and he pointed in to opposite direction, "that is what I was looking at. Well, not looking at, 'cause it was too dark to see anything," he added.  
  
"Onii-chan, what are you talking about?" Sayo asked and Hikaru was about to tell her to butt out, even if that would have been very rude; she was a manager here after all, when Sakon spoke.   
  
"Sayo-chan, please bear with us, there is something we need to check," he said. And apparently that was all there was needs as she nodded solemnly and stepped back a little as Tachibana lifted his puppet in a movement that reminded Hikaru of the Bunrake performance the night before.   
  
Sakon spoke softly, but gravely. "The art of ventriloquism is the art of mind reading. It is not just the tone you imitate, but the very soul." Ukon, in his Master's hands, had started to shake a little, like he was being hit with small jolts of invisible electricity. Then suddenly the shaking stopped and Ukon's head came up from where it had lowered down earlier.   
  
"Fujiwara! Can you hear me?" Ukon sounded different, more serious, his face showed honest concentration, where normally it had some ridiculously exaggerated grimace.  
  
Ukon's call seemed to met with silence. He tried again. "Fujiwara! Wake up! Shindou is here!"  
  
Again nothing appeared to happen, while everybody held their breaths, looking about for any abnormalcy.   
  
Then, Hikaru though he heard something, an echo of something very familiar.   
  
"Hikaru?"  
  
~~~~~~~~  
TBC


	3. Chapter 3

Now it wasn't a matter of convincing Hikaru anymore; he was convinced that he had heard Sai, no, now they had to convince Sakon and Sayo, to talk Fukami-sensei into letting them open any boxes they needed to in the work room, until they had found the source of the sounds they'd heard, and were still hearing, because Sai was very frightened.   
  
It appeared that only Ukon and Hikaru could hear Sai's frantic calling and that Sai couldn't hear their replies very well. What was clear was that Sai was some how inside one of the boxes and, now that he was 'awake' he was getting more upset by the minute at being in 'the cold and the dark'.   
  
It seemed that the Fukami's owed Tachibana some kind of dept from passed events, and that, after enough earnest whining, Sakon would do what Ukon asked, no matter how nutty it looked. In short, they got the permission.   
  
It took five tries, with Ukon trying to pin point where Sai's voice was coming from, when Hikaru found a disconcertingly small box, about 7 selves up, while standing on a tall ladder. He carefully transported the box down, all the while saying things like, "I'm here, Sai, don't worry," to the now sobbing ghost inside of it.   
  
Once back on the ground, he put the box of the clean papered bit of work bench, even though the carton box was grubby with age and dust. He then carefully removed the ribbon, and lifted the slide-on lid off the box.   
  
"Hikaru, are you there? Please, please, be there? I'm in the dark, please help me!" came from the content of the box: a puppet head, mostly unfinished, with only a basic white coat of paint, eyes and mouth unpainted, unseeing and unmoving.   
  
"Sai, I'm here, can you hear me?" Hikaru said, reaching into the box with a shaking hand.   
  
"Hikaru! Yes! Yes, I can hear you! But I can't see you, why can't I see you?"   
  
Hikaru didn't have the heart to tell him the truth, that he could not see because he had no eyes. Instead he lied, "It's in the middle of the night and there is no moon, so of course you can't see anything. Can you feel me, though?" he asked, as he cradled the head in his hands, lifting it gently out of the box.   
  
"It's night time? I understand. Yes, I think I can feel you. But I can't seem to find my fan, my hands are quite numb. It's so very cold and dark here! Don't leave me here! Don't leave me ever again."   
  
Hikaru held up the head for all to see. It was just a head, without hair even, but Hikaru recognized Sai in it, and his heart soared, even as it broke with Sai's desperate pleas. He knew all other things could be fixed, and even if they couldn't, he'd settle for being able to talk to Sai again.   
  
"Don't worry, Sai, we will never be parted now," he said to the puppet's head, then he turned to Sayo who had hovered in the background while the search had been going on and asked, "How much to buy him? And how much more to complete him?"  
  
~~~~~~~~~~  
TBC


	4. Chapter 4

As it turned out, Bunraku puppets were very expensive. Even more expensive if you wanted special features as specific hats or period correct outfits as well as super long hair and quite non-standard ruby earrings. The earrings actually caused a problem that couldn't be solved with money; Yoji-san, the puppet craftsman, was a devout Buddhist and Buddhism doesn't allow pierced ears. In the end, Hikaru proposed a compromise: gluing down the tiny ruby studs Hikaru had commissioned from a jeweler, instead of piercing the wood.   
  
Hikaru got Puppet Sai the best of the best. So what if his red Ferrari savings fund was plundered for it? Sai was more important that any shiny super car.   
  
  
Hikaru had insisted that he stay with Sai, but that was just impractical; it would take some weeks to get the puppet ready. But Hikaru would have insisted, if Ukon hadn't come up with a solution; between them they managed to convince Sai it was safe to go to sleep and not wake up until Hikaru (or Ukon) called him to wake up. Apparently it was something Sakon and Ukon had done before*, so they knew it worked. And Hikaru was able to let Yoji get on with finishing and assembling Puppet Sai in peace.   
  
It didn't stop Hikaru from dropping by the workshop every day, twice if he could mange it with his Go commitments. Hikaru's hovering nearly drove Yoji up the wall, but whenever Hikaru and Yoji were about to explode all over each other, Sayo would intervene, clealy showing why she was the assistant manger around there.   
  
But finally, after three agonizing weeks of waiting, and a now completely depleted Ferrari fund (Sai's overly long hair was last nail in the fund's coffin; it cost nearly twice what the outfit had cost. And it hadn't been a cheap outfit!) Puppet Sai was ready to be picked up.   
  
~~~~~~~~~  
  
In the time Hikaru had to wait, Tachibana had invited him over so he could learn how to work the Sai puppet. At first the idea had shocked Hikaru; for even though Sai had had no ability to affect the world around them, he had always been able to 'work' himself, as such. But Sakon explained that Ukon only really came alive when Sakon lent him his arm and hand. He wouldn't confirm to Hikaru that Ukon had any life without Sakon's help, but he would not deny it either.   
  
"There are so many things between heaven and earth, we don't know or even dream about. Who am I to question that you can hear Sai calling? Who am I to deny Ukon for hearing him? If the way to give Sai, or Ukon, a voice and an existence in this world, is by us both helping them by lending an arm, or a hand, or a life, why should we not do it?"  
  
It was after Hikaru had agreed to learn how to be a puppeteer, or at least enough of the art so he could handle Puppet Sai, that Hikaru decided to tell Tachibana and Ukon his and Sai's story. At the end of which, Ukon looked pensive and said earnestly, "Hm, I guess I'm glad I've helped the little cry-baby, after all."  
  
~~~~~~~~  
  
Hikaru had picked up, and paid for, Puppet Sai, who came to him in a fancy big box, and took him straight Tachibana's theater, where Sakon and Ukon were waiting in dressing room 3. There was no matinee that day, a rehearsal of another play taking up the stage and some of the back stage area, so they had the dressing room all to themselves.   
  
Hikaru put the box in the middle of the space. Sakon sat with Ukon on his knee and to the left stood 2 empty puppet stands; one was Ukon's, and the other would be Sai's. Off to Hikaru's right, almost stuffed into the corner stood Blockhead on his stand, the ugly puppet Hikaru had used for practice. (Blockhead had been drafted because he had been the only puppet available without a regular puppeteer)  
  
Hikaru's heart was thumping in his throat. Yoji had not let him see much of the making process, only just enough to show that he had been working hard on making Puppet Sai just the way that Hikaru had ordered. So this reveal was going to be a surprise for him as much as Sakon and Ukon.   
  
He lifted the large lid off the box. And saw something he hadn't know he had missed so much; Sai's face, in repose, with his courtly white robes with the ridiculously long sleeves, the purple /hakama/, white /tabi/ socks, bamboo-ribbed fan, and tall hat (that was not so tall as it should have been, on the advice of Tachibana; because it would turn into a hindrance with handling the puppet).   
  
Hikaru hadn't realized he'd been crying, until his hand dashed the tears away all by itself. He wasn't embarrassed about crying. No, he knew Ukon was old enough to knot not to laugh at tears like these and he knew that Sakon had cried when he thought Ukon was lost in that fire, after Tachibana had told him as a thank you to Hikaru for telling his own stories about Fujiwara no Sai.  
  
"Go ahead, pick him up," Sakon urged gently from the other side of the box. "Only when you give him your arm and your hand, his soul can gain freedom."  
  
Hikaru swallowed and reached forward. Very gently he lifted the doll from the box and sat it on his left knee as he'd been taught. He slipped his left hand under the /kariginu/, the over robes, and into the slip up the back of the /hitoe/ undergarment, to crawl up into the puppet's inner workings. The moment he touched his finger tips to the wooden levers and pulleys, he felt the puppet move.   
  
Even tough Sakon had warned him, he was startled. "For some few special puppeteers, they know, the moment that they pick up a particular puppet, that the puppet was made for them, and they are destined for a life together. I feel that with Ukon," Sakon had said a week or so ago. And now Hikaru felt it. A deep connection. It felt the same as before; a homecoming.  
  
He felt his hand turn around, turning the puppet's face towards his own. The eyes were still closed. Still asleep. And yet he felt the connection strengthen with each of his own heart beat.   
  
"Sai, it's time to wake up. I am here. Your Hikaru is here!" Hikaru called. And he saw the fine eyelashes flutter, and then he saw the eyes slowly open to reveal Sai's purple eyes. And with it he felt that deep connection swell and grow, making his world both huge and small, confined to amethyst orbs and the unique soul they held, as Hikaru felt himself drowning in the purplest of purple hues.  
  
~~~~~~~~  
TBC 


	5. Chapter 5

Hikaru came to to, "Wake up you /baka/! Scare us all half to death, why don't chya! Geez!"   
  
"Ukon shut up. Fujiwara-san, please stop crying, Shindou-san only fainted. Oh look, he's coming 'round already. Nothing to worry about, right?" The last was said in Hikaru's direction and he used his right hand the push himself back to a sitting position, while he felt his left hand almost moving on it's own. Then he felt his eyes cross themselves as Puppet Sai pushed in very close to his face and, with the biggest puppy-dog eyes Sai had ever displayed, the puppet asked, "Hikaru? Are you alright?" Then the puppet moved his face a bit further back and raised his wooden arms and excitedly exclaimed, "Look at me, I'm real, and I can see and wave my arms and..."   
  
"Yes, I can see that," Hikaru said, having recovered from his faint. "And so can Ukon and Sakon," he added.   
  
The puppet actually appeared to blush at that as it covered it's mouth with both it's wooden hands. It turned around and bowed politely saying, "My apologies! I am Fujiwara no Sai, /douzo yorshiku/."   
  
~~~~~~~~  
TBC


	6. Epilogue

Epilogue  
~~~~~~~~  
  
Hikaru started awake from the shake of the hand on his right arm.   
  
"You puppet has stopped playing," Touya Akira croaked from across the /goban/.   
  
"Wha?" Hikaru found himself almost sliding out his chair. Ah geez, he'd fallen asleep in the middle of a game, again. At 101 he was just getting to old for this shit.   
  
"Sai!" Hikaru admonished and Puppet Sai had the grace to look chagrinned. Well too right, puppet Sai knew better than to play on after Hikaru had nodded off.   
  
Hikari wiggled around the chair, until he was sitting up properly again, and surveyed the game on the board. "Hm," he said after a few minutes, "I don't recall playing any part of this game at all." He used his right hand to make Puppet Sai stop from turning away from him. "Sai, what have you been..."   
  
"Never mind that," Touya croaked, his eyes trained on the game board. "Just make him finish the game; he's 4 moves away from winning and I want to get through the post-game discussion before dinner time or Mieko will read me the riot act."   
  
Hikaru shuddered; he'd been there one time to witness that and it hadn't been pretty. Touya was just totally daughter-hen-pecked, poor dude.  
  
Wait, what? "Since when do you know that...?" Hikaru started.   
  
"That Fujiwara here is really SAI and that he plays for you when you're too lazy to, or too asleep to, but admittedly never in a pro game? About 5 years." Touya said matter of factually, his voice still wheezy and scratchy after his bout with pneumonia 3 years ago. "Now get on with it," he commanded in true Touya arrogance.   
  
"Hikaru, may I?" Puppet Sai asked meekly, and it reminded Hikaru of days long ago when he was a boy haunted by a Go loving ghost. Nothing had really changed, so he said "Yes, you may," and played the stone on the coordinate that Puppet Sai called out just as he had done one hundred years ago. {PACHIE}   
  
~~~~~~~~  
THE END  
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So, there it is, my X-over ^.^ Hope you liked it!  
Thanks to tuuli for organizing the fest!  
  
  
I still have a few ideas for this fic, just some more scenes. If you're interested, just follow this fic and when I add something, you will get notified. 


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